Monitor who is driving around us, and avoid
those with bad driving records (awesome)

Detect my mood and queue up appropriate music.
(OK, this one is a little
far-fetched. But not much.)

We are rapidly approaching a time when “car” could be as
much of an anachronistic,
catch-all term for a whole suite of functions as “phone” is for that
internet-connected computing device in my pocket. In fact, cars may turn out to
be theultimate “mobile technology.”
(Pun shamelessly borrowed from the Wired article I link to in the opening
paragraph.)

Why is so-called “smart mobility” an issue for museums, and
not just for impatient futurists? Because access is everything, and museums
need to start thinking about how people will get to their museums in coming
decades, and what opportunities and challenges this presents.

Many firms are already experimenting with alternatives to
car ownership, if not car use per se. ZipCar
was just bought by Avis-Budget. The traditional car rental firm thinks it
can make the popular car share service (which only just began to break even)
into a money-making proposition. Start-ups like GetAround, JustShareIt and
Wheelz are experimenting with platforms that support peer-to-peer
car sharing. The leading contender in this new market, RelayRides, is
backed by GM and Google, so again—mainstream street cred. (That pun was mine.)

Bicycle transportation is on the rise as well. More and more
cities (e.g., Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington) are investing in Bike
Share programs and expanding bike lanes and trails.

How might museums take these personal transportation trends into
account?

Make sure you have the information you need to
assess how changes in transportation may affect your organization. If you don’t
have data about how people get to your museum, start collecting it! If you do
“non-visitor” surveys, be sure to ask about barriers to access, including
transportation.

Project potential financial impact. Do you
depend significantly on income from parking? If so, you might want to create a
scenario in which fewer people park, and pay, and start working out how to make
up the lost revenue.

If you are planning a new facility, think about
how much to invest in parking infrastructure, and how to make it flexible and
adaptive (so you are not, for example, stuck with a half-used parking garage
that is designed in such a way as to be hard to re-purpose).

Include alt transportation options in your
marketing message, especially if you are targeting Gen Y. “Zip cars--they're not just for runs to the grocery store or Ikea—take one to the museum!"

Partner with commercial firms and
city planners to make sure you have a car share and/or bike share station on
or near your grounds.

I did a recent
tweet-out, asking for examples of museums with Bikeshare/Carshare sites on
their campus or nearby. Here are some of the replies. You can add to this collection
in the comment section, below, or tweet to the attention of @futureofmuseums.

SAMAart @SAMAart @futureofmuseums we do! we have
a @bcycle station at SAMA + we are a river taxi station on the Museum Reach
portion of the river #sanantonio

Maren Dougherty @MarenReport @futureofmuseums There
are @car2goSanDiego stations in @BalboaPark, home of these museums:
balboapark.org/in-the-park/museums

FLMNH @FloridaMuseum We have bike share within
museum grounds and car share in adjacent lots,

Diane Shaw @Museocat @futureofmuseums There are
a lot of DC @bikeshare stations near museums on the Mall and elsewhere (map at
capitalbikeshare.com/stations